[governance] FORMAL CONSENSUS CALL - IGC endorsement: International civil society letter to Congress

Mon Jun 17 06:46:34 EDT 2013

[with IGC coordinator hat on]

As there have been no objections, the endorsement has been
approved by consensus.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this process!

Greetings,
Norbert

> > > http://bestbits.net/prism-congress/
> 
> [with IGC coordinator hat on]
> 
> FORMAL CONSENSUS CALL
> 
> We have had quite a few expressions of support for the “International
> civil society letter to Congress” already, and no objections so far.
> 
> Please review the proposed statement text as included for reference
> below.
> 
> If you agree with the proposed statement or are indifferent about it,
> there is no need to take action about it at the current stage.
> 
> If however you disagree with IGC expressing support for this letter,
> it is now the final opportunity to object if you wish to do so.
> 
> ** Any objections should be posted by Monday June 17, 9am UTC. **
> 
> If no objections are received by that time, IGC endorsement of the
> proposed letter will be deemed to have been decided by consensus.
> 
> NOTE on potential further steps in the decision-making process: If
> there are any objections, we will then discuss how to proceed.
> 
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> 
> -- text proposed for endorsement
> follows--------------------------------
> 
> Civil society letter to United States Congress on Internet and
> telecommunications surveillance
> 
> Members of US Congress:
> 
> We write as a coalition of civil society organizations from around the
> world to express our serious alarm regarding revelations of Internet
> and telephone communications surveillance of US and non-US citizens by
> the US government. We also wish to express our grave concern that US
> authorities may have made the data resulting from those surveillance
> activities available to other States, including the United Kingdom,
> the Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand.[1] Many
> US-based Internet companies with global reach also seem to be
> participating in these practices.[2]
> 
> The introduction of surveillance mechanisms at the heart of global
> digital communications severely threatens human rights in the digital
> age. These new forms of decentralized power reflect fundamental shifts
> in the structure of information systems in modern societies.[3] Any
> step in this direction needs to be scrutinized through ample, deep and
> transparent debate. Interference with the human rights of citizens by
> any government, their own or foreign, is unacceptable. The situation
> of a citizen unable to communicate private thoughts without
> surveillance by a foreign state not only violates the rights to
> privacy and human dignity, but also threatens the fundamental rights
> to freedom of thought, opinion and expression, and association that
> are at the center of any democratic practice. Such actions are
> unacceptable and raise serious concerns about extra-territorial
> breaches of human rights. The inability of citizens to know if they
> are subject to foreign surveillance, to challenge such surveillance,
> or to seek remedies is even more alarming.[4]
> 
> The contradiction between the persistent affirmation of human rights
> online by the US government and the recent allegations of what appears
> to be mass surveillance of US and non-US citizens by that same
> government is very disturbing and carries negative repercussions on
> the global stage. A blatant and systematic disregard for the human
> rights articulated in Articles 17 and 19 of the International
> Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the United
> States is signatory, as well as Articles 12 and 19 of the Universal
> Declaration of Human Rights is suggested. Bearing in mind that the US
> must engage in a long overdue discussion about how to update and
> modernize its policy to align with its own founding documents and
> principles, what happens next in legislative and Executive Branch
> oversight in the US will have huge and irreversible consequences for
> the promotion and protection of the human rights of people around the
> world.
> 
> It is also notable that the United States government supported the
> United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 20/8, which “[a]ffirms
> that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected
> online, in particular freedom of expression …”[5] and, just a few days
> ago, on June 10, the US was part of a core group of countries that
> drafted a cross regional statement, which correctly emphasized “that
> when addressing any security concerns on the Internet, this must be
> done in a manner consistent with states’ obligations under
> international human rights law and full respect for human rights must
> be maintained.”[6] That was apparently not the case with the latest
> practices of the US Government. Besides representing a major violation
> of fundamental human rights of people worldwide, the incoherence
> between practices and public statements by the US also undermines the
> moral credibility of the country within the global community that
> fights for human rights, as they apply to the Internet and fatally
> impacts consumers’ trust in all American companies that provide
> worldwide services.
> 
> On 10 June, 2013 many signatories to this letter joined together to
> raise our concerns to the United Nations Human Rights Council.[7] We
> did so against the background of the recent report of the UN Special
> Rapporteur on the right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Mr.
> Frank La Rue.[8] This report detailed worrying trends in state
> surveillance of communications with serious implications for the
> exercise of the human rights to privacy and to freedom of opinion and
> expression. We note that US-based stakeholders have also written a
> letter to Congress to express their concerns about the compliance of
> the current national surveillance program with domestic law.[9]
> 
> We are also extremely disappointed that, in all the post ‘disclosures’
> statements, US authorities have only insisted that there was no access
> obtained to content related to US citizens, and just their
> communication meta-data was collected. There has not been a word on
> the issue of large-scale access to content related to non US citizens,
> which constitute an almost certain human rights violation. The
> focusing of the US authorities on the difference between treatment of
> US citizens and non-citizens on an issue which essentially relates to
> violation of human rights is very problematic. Human rights are
> universal, and every government must refrain from violating them for
> all people, and not merely for its citizens. We strongly advocate that
> current and future legal provisions and practices take this fact into
> due consideration.
> 
> We therefore urge the Obama administration and the United States
> Congress to take immediate action to dismantle existing, and prevent
> the creation of future, global Internet and telecommunications based
> surveillance systems. We additionally urge the US Administration, the
> FBI and the Attorney General to allow involved or affected companies
> to publish statistics of past and future Foreign Intelligence
> Surveillance Act (FISA) requests they have received or may
> receive.[10] We further call on the US Congress to establish
> protections for government whistleblowers in order to better ensure
> that the public is adequately informed about abuses of power that
> violate the fundamental human rights of the citizens of all
> countries, US and other.[11] We also join Humans Rights Watch in
> urging the creation of an independent panel with subpoena power and
> all necessary security clearances to examine current practices and to
> make recommendations to ensure appropriate protections for the rights
> to privacy, free expression, and association. The results of this
> panel should be broadly published.
> 
> [1]
> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d0873f38-d1c5-11e2-9336-00144feab7de.html,
> https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/11/bits-of-freedom-dutch-spooks-must-stop-use-of-prism/
> and http://www.standaard.be/cnt/DMF20130610_063.
> 
> [2] Including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype,
> YouTube, and Apple:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
> 
> [3] http://www.state.gov/statecraft/overview/
> 
> [4] (A/HRC/23/40)
> 
> [5] http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/RES/20/8
> 
> [6] http://geneva.usmission.gov/2013/06/10/internet-freedom-5/
> 
> [7] http://bestbits.net/prism-nsa
> 
> [8] (A/HRC/23/40)
> 
> [9] Asking the U.S. government to allow Google to publish more
> national security request data
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/asking-us-government-to-allow-google-to.html
> 
> [10] https://www.stopwatching.us/
> 
> [11] The just-released Global Principles on National Security and
> Freedom of Information (the Tshwane Principles) which address the
> topic of Whistleblowing and National Security provide relevant
> guidance in this regard:
> http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/Global%20Principles%20on%20National%20Security%20and%20the%20Right%20to%20Information%20%28Tshwane%20Principles%29%20-%20June%202013.pdf.
> 

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